Raw Nerve

These poems are a powerful domestic narrative about families and the suffering that sometimes come with them: the loss of children, the rituals which constitute a family life and other poems about the poet's own childhood.

Raw Nerve is Hillman’s best . . . it’s the bruising and bloodying encounters of family life which we read in this collection. We have all read poems about children discovering the world in a shell as they scurry and stop along a beach, but we are more likely to find Hillman up on a slippery suburban roof, at night, with his primary school aged daughter, hunting for constellations; “safe” is not a word in his vocabulary! . . . His nerves are sometimes stretched as tight as the wire in a fence, but he always remembers what he is here for and believes it is worth it and, that he emerges clutching these poems, is something for which we should be grateful. — John West

Here’s a slice of suburbia to make you sigh with the stresses that are all too familiar for those who have lived with little people. There are the games of the children and the games of the adults, and within these, the ages blur. Some of these poems will make you shudder like the fridge!" — Geoff Goodfellow

Richard Hillman grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney . He is an independent scholar, publisher, editor and author. He currently lives near Timbertown, NSW, with his son.